An average movie

Since the ratings were pretty decent and since it was Chris Columbus’ directing debut, I was quite eager to check this flick. Furthermore, the title sounded pretty neat as well. Unfortunately, I thought the whole thing was rather disappointing. Indeed, in my opinion, the concept was actually really similar to ‘Home Alone’ which would be also directed by Columbus 3 years later and would turn out to be a massive box-office success. Indeed, it is rather similar in the sense that, even though it is basically about some kids involved in some seriously dangerous situations, the tone is actually really frivolous and the makers try to convince you that the whole thing is actually rather harmless, that nothing much is at stake and that the kids involved actually have the best time of their life. Well, I wasn’t really convinced. For example, at some point, one of the teenage boys flirt with a prostitute (without noticing that she is actually a hooker) and they find out that she is actually just a few years older than them and that she ran away from home. And they played this scene as if it was funny! Well, it wasn’t funny and even rather misguided. Later on, you had the young girl literally hanging from a roof, chased by some thug and, once again, I felt rather uncomfortable watching this. To conclude, even though the whole thing had some potential, it didn’t really work out for me and I don’t think it is really worth a look.

5/10